“Yes, I do need a bit of tidying,” he said. “Perhaps you wouldn’t mind my shaving down here?”
Even as he spoke the young stone-carver could not help recalling those sinister stories of dead men whose beards have grown in their coffins. The landlady nodded.
“I’ll make ’ee up a bed for these ’ere days,” she said, “in Betty’s room. As for shaving and such like, please yourself, Master Luke. This house be thy house with him lying up there.”
Between nine and ten o’clock Luke’s first visitor made his appearance. This was Mr. Clavering, who showed himself neither surprised nor greatly pleased to find the bereft brother romping with the children under the station-master’s apple-trees.
“I cannot express to you the sympathy I feel,” said the clergyman, “with your grief under this great blow. Words on these occasions are of little avail. But I trust you know where to turn for true consolation.”
“Thank you, sir,” replied Luke, who, though carefully shaved and washed, still wore the light grey flannel suit of his Saturday’s excursion.
“Give Mr. Clavering an apple, Lizzie!” he added.
“I wouldn’t for a moment,” continued the Reverend Hugh, “intrude upon you with any impertinent questions. But I could not help wondering as I walked through the village how this tragedy would affect you. I prayed it might,”—here he laid a grave and pastoral hand on the young man’s arm,—“I prayed it might give you a different attitude to those high matters which we have at various times discussed together. Am I right in my hope, Luke?”
Never had the superb tactlessness of Nevilton’s vicar betrayed him more deplorably.